Services called Microfinance plus services can be regarded as interesting in the framework of integrated development. Since these services include social and sanitary dimensions, indeed we can reasonably consider Microfinance to have a great potential as a powerful social and sanitary tool. Nonfinancial services can be powerful development tools in many environments and communities, provided they are designed with the populations and with care to respond to the real needs of the populations served; they can even be of greater importance to rural women via whom, their families and their whole communities can benefit from them and be empowered.

More than 1.5mn loans worth $831mn have been given out in the past seven years, said the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA), which was set up by the government in 2003 to coordinate the sector. Thirty years of conflict have shattered Afghanistan’s economy and infrastructure, leaving two-thirds of the roughly 30mn population illiterate and at least a third in dire poverty.

A meta-evaluation on microfinance released by the Evaluation Cooperation Group of international financial institutions reports that microfinance operations have had difficulty in reaching the very poor.

Welcome to this blog about Microfinance, Innovations and Sustainable Development